Today the U.S. Supreme Court ordered the administration to return Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia from that hellish prison in El Salvador. To me this was the single most hopeful piece of news that has come down the pike in quite a while.
Thomas Jefferson pointed out that the writ of habeas corpus is one of the fundamental guarantees of human rights necessary for a free society. If a government can simply be disappear an individual from society with no due process, then freedom is illusory.
In particular, if Garcia can be permanently disappeared into an El Salvadorian hellhole due to an “administrative error”, with the explanation that the U.S. has no jurisdiction to extract him, then you and I can also be permanently disappeared. The exact same legal justification would apply.
So the line in the sand that was drawn today by SCOTUS was a crucial one. You and I, and the entire population of the U.S., just dodged a very large and dangerous bullet.